Imaginary Archive: The Wellington Collaboratorium
Gregory Sholette and collaborators (see below)
Enjoy Public Art Gallery
Wellington, New Zealand
3 June 2010 – 27 June, 2010
Over the month of June, the New York-based artist, writer and academic Gregory Sholette, was artist
in residence at Enjoy. His concept was to create an archive of a future that never happened. Sholette’ s
Wellington Collaboratorium unfolded as a public art project, a series of Brown Bag lunchtime discussions,
and a weekend seminar, including a lecture by the artist, as well as a public panel discussion on
contemporary collaborative practice. Sholette’ s residency project took on the notion of collaboration as
a living, working material to be uncovered, explored, and put into motion. The project developed from
a series of open calls for participation with Danna Vajda (NY), Darra Greenwald & Josh MacPhe (NY),
Grant Corbishley (NZ), Matt Whitwell (NZ), Bryce Galloway (NZ), Johan Lundh (NY/Sweden), Lee
Harrop (NZ), Malcom Doidge (NZ), Murray Hewitt (NZ), Oliver Ressler (Austria), Yevgeniy Fiks (NY),
White Fungus (Taiwan), Maureen Conner (NY), Olga Kopenkina (NY), Jeremy Booth (NZ), Jeffrey
Skoller (NY), and Ellen Rothenberg (Chicago).
“Under the title The Wellington Collaboratorium, Enjoy has itself been turned into something of a ragged
archival site, spilling out into the streets. Within the Collaboratorium (a title that emphasises it as a free
laboratory for experiment rather than necessarily finished artwork) Sholette’s The Imaginary Archive is an
installation of books, brochures, and pamphlets brought together from collaborators in New Zealand and
overseas that highlights alternate histories and imaginary worlds, as well as documenting a myriad of art
collective’s work. Like a digital web it sprawls out radically in all sorts of disorientating directions, Sholette
resisting playing editor (though ironically he remains selector and initiator). And less the project end up
being experienced only by artists, it has invaded displays in the city library and Quilters and Aunty Bees
second hand bookshops. By the time I got to the windows of Aunty Bees [bookstore] my political antenna
were so raised it became difficult to discern whether the books had been rearranged or not. Inside the shop
Sholette (also a modelmaker) had also made a sculptural insertion into a book – resembling a wormhole-
like archaeological excavation complete with ladder into a copy of New Zealand Dramatic Landscapes, an
ingenious symbol for encouraging an unearthing of our buried past.”
Mark Amery, The Dominion Post (NZ), June 24, 2010 (http://www.thebigidea.co.nz/news/columns/mark-
amery-visual-arts/2010/jun/71341-come-together)
View the archive here
